William De Leon – aka Bill De Leon – is a Senior Portfolio Manager with close to three decades of experience specializing in fixed income asset management. Between 2009 to 2018 he held the roles of Managing Director and Global Head of Portfolio Risk Management at PIMCO, an investment management company specializing in asset allocation, commodities, EFTs, equities, fixed income, hedge funds and private equity. During that tenure, De Leon was the head of a team of 13 risk managers working on various portfolios around the world, in line with PIMCO’s investment themes as well as risk tolerance management.
Prior to joining PIMCO, De Leon was Portfolio Manager at Ellington Group Management where he strategized currency options, curve options, mortgage options, short- and long-dated options and skew trades. Earlier on in his career, William De Leon worked at Merrill Lynch (as a director, responsible for US Government bond desk risk management systems) where he launched STRIPS desk hedging strategies, established new trading systems; oversaw systems groups, among other roles. Given his long-term experience in these areas, over the years De Leon has become a leading investment market analyst, commentator and speaker contributing to leading industry newspapers like Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Standard.
After graduating magna cum laude with a B.S.E. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, Bill De Leon began his career as a programmer analyst at Merrill Lynch, where he had a key role in the development of quantitative research strategies for trading Futures, Forwards and Options. He was later promoted to a director at the firm before moving on to Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette in the capacity of Senior Vice President. Thereafter De Leon held the role of Managing Director and Senior Portfolio Manager at BlackRock and then a Trader at Caxton.
In his spare time, William De Leon enjoys wine collecting, skiing and road cycling. He has a special affinity for the outdoors.